The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future

by Mustafa Suleyman

Technology can and will improve lives and solve problems. Think of a world populated by trees that are longer lived and absorb much greater amounts of CO2. Or phytoplanktons that help the oceans become a greater and more sustainable carbon sink. AI has helped design an enzyme that can break down the plastic clogging our oceans. It will also be an important part of how we predict what is coming, from guessing where a wildfire might hit suburbia to tracking deforestation through public data sets. This will be a world of cheap, personalized drugs; fast, accurate diagnoses; and AI-generated replacements for energy-intensive fertilizers. Sustainable, scalable batteries need radical new technologies. Quantum computers paired with AI, with their ability to model down to the molecular level, could play a critical role in finding substitutes to conventional lithium batteries that are lighter, cheaper, cleaner, easier to produce and recycle, and more plentiful. Likewise on work with photovoltaic materials, or drug discovery, that enables molecular-level simulations to identify new compounds—far more precise and powerful than using the slow experimental techniques of the past. This is hyper-evolution in action, and it promises to save billions in R&D while going far beyond the present research paradigm. A school of naive techno-solutionism sees technology as the answer to all of the world’s problems. Alone, it’s not. How it is created, used, owned, and managed all make a difference. ...

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